Page 13 of Trophy
“I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
“What can I get you?”
He ordered his eggs, bacon, and toast, and she wrote it down and took the slip back to clip it on the rack in the kitchen with the other orders. He watched her as he waited for his food. She had on a particular expression—a helpful, friendly expression that wasn’t exactly like her normal face. It was almost like she was playing a role.
Maybe that was the way she was able to do a job that she must have assumed she’d never have to do.
He tried to think of something to say when she came over to him again. If she was ever going to be interested in him, he needed to get her to think about him as something other than the helpful guy across the street. He was usually pretty good at flirting, but when he’d had his chance yesterday, he’d gotten distracted by her job issues. So she’d ended up grateful to him but not any more interested in him as a man than she’d been the day before.
He was usually good at this. He could think of something.
Allison took two more orders before his food was ready. She was smiling at him when she brought his plate over, but it feltmore like her “waitress face” than her real smile. He needed to change that.
He was about to say something funny and a little sexy—he wasn’t sure exactly what it would be, but he was sure something would come out when he started to speak—when he noticed that the guy down the counter from him had an empty coffee cup and was starting to look annoyed by it.
So instead of flirting, he nodded toward the guy silently, trying to give Allison a significant look so she’d refill the coffee before the customer was rude to her.
Her expression changed as she read his silent signal. She mouthed “Thanks” at him and went to grab the coffeepot, then filled up every mug in the restaurant, including Rob’s.
Rob frowned as he ate. He’d missed his chance. Now more people were coming in, and Allison was too busy to chat with him.
While she was working was probably not the best time to get to know her anyway. She was going to be learning the job for a while, so she’d probably be kind of stressed. He was sorting through reasons to invite himself over to her house when the bell on the door jingled again.
He glanced back automatically to see who had entered, and his entire body drooped when he saw it was his ex-wife, Dee.
She was pretty in the way a lot of women were pretty in Fielding. Her hair was teased out and dyed blond. She wore a lot of makeup, and her jeans were very tight. They’d been divorced for three years, and he found her so frustrating and annoying now that the attraction he’d once felt for her had completely died.
She’d obviously come in here to see him. She knew his habits just like everyone else in town. She plopped herself down on the stool beside him, smiling in her ingratiating way.
“What’s up?” he asked. He tried to be polite even when he didn’t feel like it, since she would make a fuss if she decided he was being rude.
He felt Allison looking over at him as she took the order of a large family who’d come in. She’d be wondering who Dee was. He didn’t need anything else to turn her off.
“Cali didn’t get home until four last night,” Dee said, her red lips turning down into a pout.
“Was she with that boyfriend of hers?” Rob asked, scowling at the thought of his fifteen-year-old ex-stepdaughter having a boyfriend at all.
“Of course. I don’t know what to do with her.”
Rob couldn’t help but think that if Dee spent a little less time with her own boyfriends, she’d have more time to spend with her daughter, and that might help the girl to not act out so much. But he wasn’t married to Dee anymore, so there was only so much he could say. “Have you talked to her?”
“You think I haven’t talked to her?”
“I mean, really talk to her. Not scream at her when she comes home late.”
“I’ve done everything.”
Rob sighed. He’d been very fond of Cali in the six years he was married to her mother. The marriage had never been very good—he’d realized six months into it that it was a mistake—but he’d loved the little girl and had done what he could to be a father to her.
He had no real place in her life now, though.
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Can you talk to her?” Now Dee’s eyelashes fluttered in a familiar beseeching look.
“What do you want me to say?”
“You could at least try. She never listens to me.”
